


Wolf Under Shadow

by Twitchiest



Series: Apocalypse Girl [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dark, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Present Tense, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 03:23:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4650381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twitchiest/pseuds/Twitchiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A waterskin floats towards her and bumps against her knee. She squints upstream against the sun, wondering who lost it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf Under Shadow

_**One**_  
  
This summer is a killer.  
  
That's what Boss says, anyway. All Bay know is the sky's clear blue, the sun's baking hot, and any trip out of Manor is done in a sticky mess. Even she's gone red on the shouders.  
  
The ground's the same everywhere, hard and cracked. It hasn't rained in two months. Most of the crops are fine, but they won't be seen.  
  
Bay's exhausted by the time she finds the river, head aching, and sits in a ruined little brick building, between tight-wound bramble and the wall, and gets a few hours of restless, fitful, sleep.  
  
_**Two**_  
  
The river's an arm length lower than it should be. She has to scramble down the dusty cliff to collect water. It runs clean over a mottled bed of pebbles. Some of them sparkle, so she kicks off her shoes and socks to collect them. They aren't useful, but she likes them, and she won't get anything else done until the evening.  
  
A waterskin floats towards her and bumps against her knee. She shifts a handful of stones to her pocket and catches it before the river pulls it away. She squints upstream against the sun, wondering who lost it.  
  
_**Three**_  
  
She waits until the sun's a handwidth down from its peak to beat her way upriver. She has a walking stick now, nearly as tall as she is, with steel-capped ends. She mostly uses it to flatten berry brambles and rogue nettles, like these.  
  
She's walking two handwidths before she finds a tent. Luckily, she's on the right bank.  
  
The tent is sat on a section of long grass, only two pegs beaten into the ground. A pile of wood lay in front of it. All the camp is still.  
  
An old woman lays in the grass, under the trees.  
  
_**Four**_  
  
After fixing her tent and dragging her into it, Bay realises the woman isn't that much older than Boss. She has more wrinkles, that's all, and her arms are beet red. They were in the sunlight. Her lips are dry and cracked. Her forehead is hot. Bay doesn't think that's all the sun.  
  
Her bag has the same make as the waterskin. Bay sits outside the tent and worries at her nails. Some people don't survive being baked in the sun like that, and she has work to do, but she doesn't think she can let the old woman die.  
  
_**Five**_  
  
The woman wakes enough to drink all the water in her waterskin. Bay has to wake her up every time she goes to fill it and makes her drink. She can't move her arms, so Bay holds her up.  
  
Bay digs out a firepit and finds stones to line it with. She starts a small fire and gets the net out of her bag. It's slow work catching fish in the shallowing river, but they're stupid enough to swim into an empty net, so it works.  
  
When she debones them she drops the bones back in the water, for luck.  
  
_**Six**_  
  
The woman's still feverish the next day, but when Bay rouses her in the morning and makes her lay down in shallows of the river, head in Bay's lap, she goes willingly. It's the only thing Bay knows to do, and it helps. The woman's clothes cling to her after, but when she eats fish baked in the fire embers overnight, her eyes are clear. Her arms are an older burn than Bay thought, because the edges are already peeling.  
  
They don't speak. The woman sleeps in the tent whilst Bay forages the woodlands, sets traps, and catches more fish.  
  
_**Seven**_  
  
In the night, the woman cries out. It's not words or names, or at least any Bay can make out. She wakes her, a couple times. It doesn't seem to help.  
  
Bay sets fish with slices of early apples and wild onion, wrapped in dock leaves, in the warmth of the embers and keeps watch, sleeping lightly.  
  
Noise wakes her. A deer, stepping around the fire. It goes to the water and drinks, glancing back at them constantly.  
  
Bay thinks of her knife and the net drying in the grass, but she doesn't move. This deer lives to run away.  
  
_**Eight**_  
  
In the morning, after drinking two skins full of water, the woman says, "Penelope."  
  
Bay looks up, tilting her head.  
  
"My name is Penelope," the woman says. "Most call me Penny."  
  
"Bay," Bay says, and digs out last night's fish.  
  
"Where do you come from, Bay?" Penny says.  
  
"Manor," Bay says. "I'll take you there, if you want." She eyes up the tent, where the woman's few belongings are. "Might be for the best."  
  
"That would be good of you, Bay," Penny says, and smiles. It makes her seem familiar, but Bay's never met her before. "I can't stay, mind."  
  
_**Nine**_  
  
Penny's on a pilgrimage.

Bay doesn't know the word.

It's a holy mission, Penny says. A journey, or a quest. She has spirits to lay to rest.

She helps Bay pack up her tent, and carries her own pack even she has to be hurting, and they set out before the sun gets too hot. They walk the slow way back, the one that has two old wells but takes three long days, keeping to the shade.

When Manor comes into sight, Bay's heart leaps in her chest like it always does.

"It's better than the stories," Penny says, smiling.  
  
_**Ten**_  
  
In Manor, Bay takes Penny straight to their doctors and goes to report. She finds Boss on radio duty, and waits until she's done talking with the leader of a western place called Guaren before she starts talking. Boss likes to hear everything. Bay's memory's gotten better, fast, this summer.  
  
Boss' face doesn't change the entire time.  
  
"Sorry," Bay says. "I didn't want to leave her alone."  
  
"You did well," Boss tells her. "You can look for the village next time. It's not going anywhere." Her mouth curls a little. It's almost a smile. "She's on a pilgrimage, is she?"  
  
_**Eleven**_  
  
The figure comes back that night, when she's asleep in Mace's room. He doesn't wake in the worst thunderstorm, let alone this sticky heat. When she opens her eyes and starts, hand reaching for her knife, he doesn't move.  
  
But it's just the shadow that's haunted her these last six months. Even in the darkness, she sees a deeper blackness in the shape of a man. He stands there and stares down at her.  
  
She isn't afraid of shadows. Even if she can't see their face.  
  
After a while he disappears, and she rolls over and goes back to sleep.  
  
_**Twelve**_  
  
Mace is a good man. They don't love each other, but she wasn't looking for that. They're attracted to each other, and equals. She's Boss' favourite, almost her apprentice, and he's their only electrical expert. He fixed even the broken generators.  
  
He doesn't speak until it's important to. He's only as rough as she wants him to be.  
  
She oversleeps. He leaves breakfast on the other side of the bed for her and gets to work.  
  
One catches up with her when she's been up for a while. He says, "You brought in the new woman? We need to talk."  
  
_**Thirteen**_  
  
She thinks it's trouble, because he rushes her up to the big house, but it's not.  
  
Penny sits in One's office, bare arms slathered in the same strange blue gunk half of Manor is wearing. One pulls Bay in and says, "Ask her yourself."  
  
Penny smiles up at Bay. It's still strikingly familiar. "Would you like to be a pilgrim?" she says.  
  
Bay stares.  
  
"I believe your coming to me is an omen," she says. "A good sign. I'd like you to come with me on my journey, Bay."  
  
One says, "She's going to the Cathedral."  
  
Bay stares some more.  
  
_**Fourteen**_  
  
The Cathedral is the real kind of dream. The west road goes past it, this huge stone building with real coloured glass windows, with two dozen people of all ages and types living inside it, farming the land nearby. They talk about gods there, and holy books, and lessons.  
  
Boss doesn't like them. She says they charge a cheap price for forgiveness, that they blame all the woes in the world on people and credit the good to all-powerful beings that can't exist, because they didn't stop the world from ending.  
  
Bay doesn't want to do anything that angers Boss.  
  
_**Fifteen**_  
  
Penny leaves after Bay says she'll think about it. One waits until the door's shut before he leans in and says, quiet, "It's mad, I know, but she believes it."  
  
Bay says, "It's the river. Anyone could have found her."  
  
"But you did, so it's a sign." He shrugs. "The truth is, someone taking a trip up there could be useful. Feel up to a little spying?"  
  
"Boss wants me to find that old village," she says.  
  
"It'll still be there when you come back," he says. "Think about it, Bay." He pats her on the back. "Think about it."  
  
_**Sixteen**_  
  
Bay goes to find Boss. It takes all day, and by the time she finds her, she's with One and Nine in the silent, empty smithy. Bay hesitates before she comes in.  
  
"I know," Boss says. "We're talking about it."  
  
"Arguing," Nine says, giving Bay a conspiratory wink. She nods back.  
  
"We need to focus here," Boss says. "We can't afford to waste our resources on this."  
  
One sighs. "We're not going to starve any less just because Bay's not here."  
  
Bay flinches. She thought their stores were better than that. "Boss, maybe I can -"  
  
"Excuse me?" Penny, behind Bay.  
  
_**Seventeen**_  
  
"You're the ones that came from the Pit," Penny says. "My sister was sent there. Did any of you meet her?"  
  
Boss stands in the shadows, still.  
  
One says, "Give me a name and I'll ask around. There were a lot of people in there, though, and we didn't always bother to learn names."  
  
"Helena," the woman says. "Helena Cutter."  
  
One doesn't look at Boss, but his body shifts like he wants to. "I'll ask," he repeats, softer. "But there were thousands of us in there. I can't promise anything."  
  
Penny smiles and nods. "I know," she says. "Thank you."  
  
_**Eighteen**_  
  
She leaves.  
  
Nine says, "Boss."  
  
"No," Boss says.  
  
He says, "But -"  
  
"No."  
  
Bay checks outside. Penny's long gone, halfway across the field of wheat. She comes back in and says, "I thought she looked familiar. Why hasn't she recognised you?"  
  
"Because you recognised her first," One says, tone quiet. "She hasn't seen you straight on."  
  
"She wouldn't know me," Boss says. "Get her out of here."  
  
"She's your family," Nine says. "This is a miracle."  
  
Boss whirls and snarls, "She didn't come for me!" It makes the room still, silent, waiting. "No one came," Boss says. "Make her gone."  
  
_**Nineteen**_  
  
Bay curls up in a chair in Boss' room, staring at the wall, waiting.  
  
"It's not your fault," Leander says. He's sat on the bed, reading by lantern light. "She'll come back."  
  
Really, it's not, but Bay feels wretched. The shadow's back, too, staring at her. She buries her face against her knees and sighs.  
  
"I wish I hadn't helped that woman," Bay says.  
  
"No, you don't." Leander shakes his head. "You're a kind soul, Bay -"  
  
"I need to be careful with my kindness."  
  
"Careful," he says, "But don't stop giving it away. There's secrets here, sweetling. Old, painful secrets."  
  
_**Twenty**_  
  
Bay wakes up in the chair, but there's a thin sheet over her, and it's night, and a shadow stands over her.  
  
Two. One of them's real.  
  
She blinks up at it and says, low, mouth dry, "Boss, I didn't -"  
  
Boss leans in. "Go with her," she says. "Don't get distracted. We need you here."  
  
Which meant Boss needs her. She's still wanted in Manor.  
  
Boss ruffles her hair. "Go back to sleep," she says.  
  
Bay glances left, then down. "Okay."  
  
Mace won't worry. She doesn't always go to him at night. She doesn't think she'll sleep anywhere else, tonight.  
  
_**Twenty One**_  
  
Someone's constructed what they called a thermometer, and nailed it to a wall that's in the shade all day around. It's full of a silver liquid that rises and falls. Today it's sat at a line that reads thirty.  
  
Bay spends most of the day sprawled out on the grass under the thermometer. Too hot to move. Almost too hot to breathe.  
  
Dinner is cold boiled eggs, from their overflowing bird farm and bread, nothing too heavy because no one wants to eat much, and after everyone gets a bowl with two fresh ice cubes. The freezing numbness is heaven.  
  
_**Twenty Two**_  
  
The shadow comes back every night.  
  
Bay's gone a little mad, she thinks. Maybe the city, and what happened there, did it it.  
  
He comes back whether she's in Mace's room, her own, or the hollow of the tree on the edge of Manor. She can't see his face, so she can't tell if he's angry, or sad, or anything.  
  
One night he touches her. It jolts her awake. She opens her eyes to the shadow close to her, hand on her face, and screams.  
  
The shadow disappears in an instant.  
      
Mace spends hours soothing what he thinks are nightmares.  
  
_**Twenty Three**_  
  
They leave when Penny's arms are healed, nut-brown and sensitive instead of bright red. Bay gets one of the long distance backpacks, the tall ones that have a tent rolled up at the bottom and a bedroll on the top, and the sides heavy with metal poles. Penny has her own.  
  
Penny insists on thanking everyone she's met the day before. Bay slips away out of sheer embarrassment.  
  
It's still warm the next morning, and hazy, with the promise of full blasting heat later. One sees them off, but Boss isn't there, not even in the shadows of the gate.  
  
_**Twenty Four**_  
  
Bay doesn't know how Penny got anywhere near Manor.  
  
She sees three omens in the first day. A white bird, a pair of fallen branches crossing each other, and a lump on a tree. The third makes her stop and say, "We will camp here."  
  
They've only been walking for a few hours. The sun hasn't even reached its peak.  
  
"No," Bay says, and keeps walking.  
  
After a moment, Penny follows.  
  
"You are not a believer," Penny says.  
  
"It's not belief," Bay says. "Boss sent messages on. We don't have to sleep on the road."  
  
"A resourceful woman," Penny says.  
  
_**Twenty Five**_  
  
They make the next outpost long before nightfall. The people there are tired, their crops struggling just as much as Manor's, but they feed two strangers on Boss' say-so, and even listen to the stories Penny tells.  
  
Bay's path hops between little settlements, lonely farms, and a warning post on the edge of Manor's territory. It means they don't have to feed themselves or trade for space to sleep for the ten days.  
  
Penny has to be reminded to cover her skin every day. She dawdles, watching for her omens. She's always relaxed, even when the sun's high and baking.  
  
_**Twenty Six**_  
  
Bay wants to keep off the main road. They'll only lose a day or two.  
  
Penny insists the road will be clear and safe, and that she's protected.  
  
Bay doesn't understand who's protecting this stranger, and why they didn't stop her from collapsing in the first place.  
  
They compromise by camping in the trees lining the road each night.  
  
Thirteen days away from home, Penny settles on the ground, her legs crossed, and says, "Don't you want to know why I'm doing this, Bay?"  
  
She's always using Bay's name, like she's going to forget it. Bay shrugs. "It's your choice."  
  
_**Twenty Seven**_  
  
Penny says, "My father died before the End. We cremated him, mother and I."  
  
Bay frowns.  
  
"We burned him," Penny says. "In a special machine. He wanted his ashes scattered in the graveyard his family were buried. The journey was four hundred miles. We were taking it slow, crossing the country in a couple of days."  
  
"Then the world burned," Bay says.  
  
"Yes," Penny says. "Mother died. I carry her ashes, too."  
  
"Why are you doing it now?" Bay says. "It's the worst year to travel."  
  
"I see their shadows," Penny says, smile crinkling her face. "I know it's time."  
  
_**Twenty Eight**_  
  
Bay's been told about cars. They were the strange metal boxes that they started dragging off the roads and breaking down, years ago. She wonders what it's like to cross vast distances in days. Leander says Olstead would be an hour's travel, in a car.  
  
She seen old wrecked trains, too, and she's heard of planes, but she's never seen one. The idea of getting inside something metal and trusting it to carry you through the air makes her shiver.  
  
She thinks Leander's having fun with her when he says you could go halfway around the world in a day.  
  
_**Twenty Nine**_  
  
"What do you mean by shadows?" Bay says, the next day. They're resting whilst the sun's high.  
  
Penny shakes her head. "You'll call me silly, Bay."  
  
Bay glances at her, then away. "I don't understand any of this," she says. "How can it get sillier?" Then she remembers that's rude, and ducks her head.  
  
Penny laughs. "I see them at night," she says. "Their ghosts, if you prefer. You've heard of ghost stories?"  
  
Bay nods.  
  
"They came to me this winter past. I heard them telling me," Penny says. "My people were sad to see me go, but they understood."  
  
_**Thirty**_  
  
When Penny says her people, she explains later, she means her flock. She leads them in faith and apparently they find a safe path in the future through some god.  
  
Manor makes a safe path because Boss leads them, but Boss isn't a god like Penny describes. She doesn't see or know everything. If she did, she would have had them stockpile more last year, and Manor wouldn't be facing a bad winter.  
  
Bay doesn't understand how a pair of doves convince Penny they're going to have good luck. Doves are stupid, as far as she's concerned, but good eating.  
  
_**Thirty One**_  
  
Penny talks to her shadows at night, when she thinks Bay is asleep.  
  
Or Bay thinks so. She can't see Penny's shadows, but Penny talks to thin air like it can talk back to her.  
  
At the end Penny says, "Don't go," and reaches out like a child, pushes onto her knees like she's going to chase after something that's running away from her, and then she turns and looks east like she can see the trail of something there.  
  
Morning is full of hot, dappled shade. A feral cat on the edge of their camp watches them, tail lashing.  
  
_**Thirty Two**_  
  
There's armed men on the roads.  
  
Bay drags Penny off into the undercover the moment she sees sunlight glinting off guns, pulls her down and keeps her still and quiet.  
  
She watches them, breathing slow and deep. They've got leather armour and long knives. Their guns are sparkling clean, but no bags, just waterskins. They don't have many bullets.  
  
Not many people do, these days.  
  
They don't wear Manor's badge, or any that Bay knows. They're strangers, and that's means there's something wrong.  
  
When they're out of sight, Bay leads Penny away from the road. The other woman doesn't protest.  
  
_**Thirty Three**_  
  
There's a farm out here somewhere. Bay's peered over One's maps, trying to plot out new trade routes, so often that she doesn't remember quite where it is, so they spend the entire day finding it. When they get there, the first thing she says to a worn stranger is, "Do you have a radio?"  
  
"Who's asking?" he says.  
  
"I'm Bay," she says. "I'm from Manor."  
  
His face change from wary to welcome. "Come in," he says. "I'll show you the way."  
  
Their farm holds a dozen, with four dogs and more than twenty cats. Penny greets the children, smiling.  
  
_**Thirty Four**_  
  
The radio's reception is terrible, but Bay gets through to Manor. They get Boss for her. She reports, rattling off all the details she remembers.  
  
"No," Boss says. "They're not meant to be there. Give me one of the farmstead's people."  
  
Bay calls in the farmer and listens as Boss interrogates him until she has a handful of details that don't seem relevant at all.  
  
It's dark and late when Bay gets the radio back. Boss says, "There's a village nearby, Edge. A bandit group's probably holed up there. Stay in position, keep your head down, and wait."  
  
Crackling silence.  
  
_**Thirty Five**_  
  
Bay doesn't stay still. She creeps out in the morning, finds a hiding place on the road, and waits.  
  
The day feels hotter than most. The sun scrapes at her shady sanctuary. Her legs cramp.  
  
There's more men on the road today. She counts to four thousand between each four-man group, all of them going east but never back west, so she's sure they're patrolling another route back. The edge of their territory.  
  
It's maybe three groups to an hour, and at least four seperate groups. Whoever they are, they can afford to put sixteen people on guard. Not good.  
  
_**Thirty Six**_  
  
Bay goes back under the cover of duck. The farm's exactly how she left it. She reports what she's seen to the person on the radio and they tell her to keep to her orders.  
  
There's no word from Boss.  
  
She ducks into the building to ask after food - she's starving hungry, and thirsty - and the farmer looks up and says, "Can you tell Penny we found the book for her?"  
  
Bay says, "What?"  
  
"She went out to see you," he says. "Didn't she?"  
  
Staring back at him, Bay says, "I haven't seen her all day."  
  
He pales.  
  
_**Thirty Seven**_  
  
She's never hated before, but Bay thinks she could absolutely hate Penny.  
  
The moon's full and bright and Penny doesn't know how to hide her tracks. Armed only with knife, walking stick, and a couple meal's worth of food in a satchel, Bay follows Penny's winding trail through overgrown meadows. Follows it east.  
  
Follows it right up to the front gate of a walled village.  
  
Bay clambers up a tree and sits across a bough, staring through leaves at the iron-bound gate. She didn't know if she expected anything else. Penny doesn't have the survival instinct of a fruit-drunk butterfly.  
  
_**Thirty Eight**_  
  
The guards don't know how to track, or don't care. Bay sleeps crooked between two branches for the rest of the night and watches during the day. The groups of four leave in the morning. Inside she hears stillness.  
  
She risks climbing between trees until she reaches one that's higher than the walls. From it she sees people working, and more armed men. She gives up counting after twenty, but she doesn't think there's much more than fifty. Those numbers, and their position, would prove a challenge to Manor, but they'd still deal with it. If this was their territory.  
  
_**Thirty Nine**_  
  
Boss reams her out when she gets back. Bay takes it, curling up in the rickety old chair. When Boss is done, she reports.  
  
There's already a force gathered and ready to go, forty gathered from Manor itself. Boss says they'll get there in a week, a punishing fast pace. Bay gnaws at her lip but doesn't protest.  
  
Boss finishes with, "Stay where you are," in a snapped tone.  
  
Bay says, "But -"  
  
"No," Boss says.  
  
"I can still scout," Bay says. "I might not be as good as you are, but I can help."  
  
"Stay," Boss says. "We're coming."  
  
_**Forty**_  
  
Bay obeys for all of three days.  
  
It's not that she doesn't want to be good, but farmwork is boring, and Penny's gotten herself in the middle of trouble. The farmer and his family expect it, she thinks, because when she gets up in the middle of the hot, sticky night, her bag and walking stick are by the door. She didn't leave them there, in plain sight.  
  
It's dark, humid, and cloudy. She gets to the village in enough time to circle the walls, looking for weakness, then holes up in a secure tree before dawn and stays there.  
  
**_Forty One_**  
  
The village extends over the river, and so does the wall. There are river gates, as securely locked as the others, but they're rotting at the bottom. No one's tended them in a while. They don't touch the river bed, either.  
  
Bay hides her bag, shoes, and walking stick under a shrub, checks her knife is secure and watertight, and ducks into the river.  
  
Only three foot deep, and crystal clear, she has to fight to stay down long enough to work at the gate. When the wood starts breaking, it splinters, loud as cracking pottery. No one comes to investigate.  
  
_**Forty Two**_  
  
She makes a gap that's maybe a two foot square. She takes several gulping breaths before she gets the courage to try it, and by the time she finds a way to wriggle her shoulders through, she gets stuck.  
  
She panics, clawing at the wood for the longest time, until her chest hurts from holding air inside her and her head swims, and then, then something gives and she hits the surface and gulps air.  
  
Stupid, stupid, plan. Boss'll be shouting for a week when she hears about it.  
  
She looks around, coughing hard, but no one heard her.  
  
_**Forty Three**_  
  
No one heard her because they're all in some kind of village hall, laughing and joking.  
  
She creeps in the shadows beyond the firelight, barefoot.  
  
Fifty was right, she decides, but they're not all in there. They've got a lot of women serving them, and one of them's Penny, bearing drunken insults with the same mild grace as Bay's doubting conversation.  
  
Penny's safe, but by the looks of the women, Bay doesn't think anyone else is. She's never doubted this is all wrong, but now she has proof.  
  
Tonight she retreats, squeezing through her gap and finding another safe place.  
  
_**Forty Four**_  
  
On the seventh day, one of the patrols come back early. They shout to open the gates, and rush in.  
  
Two of the patrol were injured, one limping. Bay thinks about the distance from Manor in her head. Even at a hard pace, in this heat, Boss' force will need a day of rest, so maybe the men met Manor scouts.  
  
That night, they don't hole up in the village hall. They march out, most of them, in the relative cool of dusk, and the gates slam shut behind them.  
  
Bay calculates her odds.  
  
Bay drops out of her tree.  
  
_**Forty Five**_  
  
Her shadow haunts her in the night.  
  
She hides bag, walking stick, and shoes by the gate, betting on a hope, and slips through her hole.  
  
She's watched well, these last few days. She doesn't like her knife, but she likes what the men are doing to the village less.  
  
The women are penned up in the village hall under the armed guard of two men. She can't take them straight.  
  
Three men sleep in one of the houses they use for sleeping quarters. She rolls a pair of beer barrels in front of the door.  
  
That leaves only four.  
  
_**Forty Six**_  
  
She makes herself like Boss. Cold, quick, and ruthless.  
  
The four unaccounted for are patrolling the quiet village, in pairs. She climbs a house and pries a slate off the roof, throwing it just the right time.  
  
Someone shouts. Flat against the roof, still damp, she clings on and hopes.  
  
Rough laughter. A groan.  
  
She lets herself off the building and circles around. One on the ground, bleeding. The other leaning over him. Both with their guns.  
  
She shuts down her protesting mind and she moves without thought.  
  
It's like killing pigs. If you do it fast, they die quick.  
  
_**Forty Seven**_  
  
The shadow's there when she finishes cleaning the knife. She does that fast, too. She doesn't like blood.  
  
So she turns and straightens and it's there. Still no face, but it points behind her.  
  
Whether it's a hallucination or not, she pays attention, and hears footsteps.  
  
She runs, light and easy, and isn't there when they find the bodies. She's around a corner, crouched in the shelter of an empty, broken chicken coup, barely breathing.  
  
They're shouting. She doesn't pay attention.  
  
The shadow drifts across, watching not her but the men. When it gestures, she presses back harder. They're coming.  
  
_**Forty Eight**_  
  
It's only in Twelve's stories that the bad people split up.  
  
These stay together. It's only luck that they go the other way first.  
  
She can't take two, not when they're watching out for an enemy.  
  
She moves, ghostlike, back to the dead men and searches them. One of them has a handgun, and her hand shakes when she touches it. She doesn't want to, she doesn't want-  
  
They're calling out. Insulting her.  
  
She swallows and holds the gun tight.  
  
The shadow does nothing but watch. Does it judge her?  
  
Properly armed, she follows the two men through the village.  
  
_**Forty Nine**_  
  
Luck finishes the job for her.  
  
She knocks something with her toe, and even though she's fast ducking for cover, one of them sees her.  
  
The second says, "It's nothing, man, they're gone," but he comes back, and he checks her cover, and she presses the gun into his skin and doesn't think.  
  
The second shouts. Cold grips her arm and pulls her sideways and bullets fill where she was.  
  
She turns, firing blindly, and gets him. He screams. On the ground, clutching himself. She walks up to him to fire again.  
  
Her aim is terrible, if she isn't close.  
  
_**Fifty**_  
  
She walks.  
  
The men in the village hall are restless, argumentative. She doesn't think. Doesn't want to think. She slips in the back, through the kitchen, and walks in and shoots one of them.  
  
She gets his leg. Her hands are shaking. They're throwing her aim off.  
  
His friend shouts and fires, and her shadow yanks her aside again. She pulls the trigger. No more bullets. Drops the gun.  
  
Just her knife, now.  
  
Her hands still when she reaches for it.  
  
He shouts something again, and women surge up, dragging at him. He hits the floor hard and doesn't move.  
  
_**Fifty One**_  
  
She remembers the rest in painful clarity.  
  
They open the gates long enough for her to collect her things, the entire village milling around near the gates, and then Penny hugs her.  
  
Bay still can't cry, but Penny's warm where Bay's gone cold.  
  
"They will come back," Penny says, her voice carrying over the hubbub. "We must put their bodies in one place and prepare."  
  
"They won't," Bay says. "Boss only loses when she wants to."  
  
Penny smiles at her. "Still," she says. "We prepare. Rest, dear Bay-flower. We may need you."  
  
She sounds like Leander when she says that.  
  
_**Fifty Two**_  
  
Bay's right. They don't.  
  
They give her a bed. She sleeps almost all the way to noon, and when she wakes up it's with Boss leaning over her.  
      
Boss slaps her.  
  
It stings, but it's not really painful. Bay stares up at Boss wide-eyed.  
  
"You disobeyed orders," Boss says, voice biting. "Why?"  
  
"I had to," Bay says.  
  
Another slap. This one hurts. "We could have lost you," Boss says, and in it Bay hears I, and the sharp anger that comes before the relief Boss will never show, if she feels it at all.  
  
"I had to try," Bay whispers.  
  
_**Fifty Three**_  
  
Boss' idea of forgiveness is to sit Bay on her right as she receives the village leader and his gratitude. Hidden under other, cautious words, he makes overtures of allegiance.  
  
Another village that will fall to Manor's inevitable spread across the land.  
  
Some of Boss' little militia are injured, but only three died. The rest abduct her that night and she sings with them around the fire. They're proud of what she does, and she pretends humility, distracting them again and again until she can get away.  
  
She sleeps sat against the foot of Boss' bed. Her shadow doesn't come.  
  
_**Fifty Four**_  
  
Boss brought Penny's bag. It's a reminder that they aren't done.  
  
Penny's up and waiting for Bay on the third morning after the village of Edge is freed. Bay scrounges up food and joins her.  
  
Manor's guards let them out without so a word.  
  
Penny stops in the gateway and looks back. Boss is standing there, alone, in the road.  
  
Bay thinks they look most alike in this light.  
  
"Helena Cutter is dead," Boss says. "Don't go looking for her."  
  
Penny nods, smiling. She turns to the road.  
  
Bay stays, hand tight around her walking stick, as Boss walks away.  
  
_**Fifty Five**_  
  
The graveyard Penny wants to go to is on the edge of a town three days away, and the Cathedral another two after that. They walk in quiet under a sky littered with white wisps for hours before Penny says, "Who is your shadow?"  
  
Bay could pretend confusion. Still, there's bruises on her arms where cold grabbed of her. "I don't know," she lies. "Could be anyone."  
  
"It can be a good thing, being haunted," Penny says.  
  
Bay shrugs. "He doesn't do much."  
  
"He saved your life," Penny says. "That's enough."  
  
Twice, but she doesn't need anyone to know that.  
  
_**Fifty Six**_  
  
The clouds thicken and the heat intensifies.  
  
Penny looks at Bay like she knows everything. Bay bristles, wanting to argue with her but not quite why.  
  
Walking doesn't make her forget how heavy her knife is. It puts distance between her and the gun.  
  
They circle around the ruined town to the graveyard. The gate is covered in a briar patch ten meters wide, so she breaks a hole in the fence to the strange green wilderness inside, and beats her way between young trees and bushes alike to get in.  
  
She hits stone occasionally. She apologises each time.  
  
_**Fifty Seven**_  
  
Bay doesn't know how far she is in when she finds a paved area. It has a curved wall bearing plaques green with age, and is only covered in grass.  
  
"Is this far enough?" she says.  
  
"The memorial wall," Penny says. "Yes."  
  
She keeps the ashes in a pair of silver flasks. As she unscrews each one she says a prayer, then scatters it across the grass. Nothing happens. Penny glances to her right, then straight ahead, smiling.  
  
"Is that it?" Bay says.  
  
"Yes," Penny says. "Thank you." She raises her face the sky.  
  
A rumble breaks the graveyard's quiet.  
  
_**Fifty Eight**_  
  
The sky cracks open and explodes rain.  
  
Bay and Penny wade towards the shelter of some trees, one faster than the other, and laugh.  
  
The air's cold, almost chilly. Bay holds her hands out in the rain and drinks rainwater, a little at a time.  
  
"This is an omen," Penny tells her hours later, when the rain's stopped and night is drawing in. "You are blessed, Bay. Everything will be well."  
  
Bay isn't sure it's an omen, but the wind's blowing towards Manor, carrying the rainstorm with it. "Maybe," she says. At least they might still have a good harvest.  
  
_**Fifty Nine**_  
  
It rains, on and off, for days. They spend most of their time walking back to Cathedral hiding under trees, listening to the wind shaking the trees. The Keepers welcome Penny back with open arms. Bay gets a room to stay in until the skies finally clear, and the gift of a waterproof for when she leaves.  
  
She doesn't say goodbye. She doesn't want it to be so final, even though she'll never see Penny again. Instead, she sets a witch-red apple on the empty table in Penny's room before she goes, and leaves no other trace she was ever there.

  
  
_**Sixty**_  
  
She's asleep, safe and secure in the hollow top of a great old tree, when the presence wakes her up. She blinks her eyes open and there's a figure sat on a rotting branch, staring at her. She can't see its eyes, but she knows. She always knew.  
  
He's smiling.  
  
"Don't go," she says.  
  
He's not angry with her. She can feel it. He loved her too much.  
  
He holds out a hand and she reaches out to take it, stretching. For a moment, she can feel his skin on hers, warm.  
  
Then he disappears, her hand passing through nothing.  
  
_**Sixty One**_  
  
Manor's crops are saved.  
  
Bay doesn't help with harvest. She's knee-deep in brambles filling a crate, on wheels with a handle, with ancient plastic boxes full of berries. There's enough for Manor to have a host of berry pies and the birds to stuff themselves silly too.  
  
Once, she stumbles on a root and tips backwards. A shiver of cold catches her. There's no shadow there when she turns. She smiles at the air anyway.  
  
She takes more care with her next step.  
  
She eats some of the berries as she picks. They're tart and sweet at the same time.


End file.
